Unit 17: Question Words (언제, 어디, 누구, 왜, 어떻게)¶

To have a real conversation, you need to be able to ask questions! Today we will learn the 5 W's (and 1 H) in Korean.

The beauty of Korean is that you do not need to change the word order to ask a question. You just swap out the noun for a question word!

1. 언제 (eon-je) = When¶

You can put 언제 anywhere in the sentence (usually before the verb) to ask when something happens.

Because 어디 is a location noun, it must be paired with the location markers we learned in Unit 16 (에 or 에서).

어디에 있어요? = Where is it? / Where are you? (Existence)
어디에 가요? = Where are you going? (Direction)
어디에서 공부해요? = Where do you study? (Action) (Note: 어디에서 is often shortened to 어디서 in spoken Korean).

누구 is used to ask "Who".

(We will learn a special rule about '누구' when it is the subject of the sentence in Unit 19!)

왜 is very simple and usually placed right before the verb.

You can also just say "왜요?" to ask "Why?" politely.

어떻게 asks by what method or in what manner something is done.